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Constructors Championship

Following a successful year of World Tour competition, Starboard finish the year as the top board brand, and NeilPryde are the highest ranked sail brand.

The PWA Constructors Championship title is an extremely sought after award which represents the epitome of windsurfing development and manufacture. Throughout the year, brands within the industry have the opportunity to gain points from their sponsored riders results at World Tour events. At the final showdown of the season the points are totted up and the prestigious awards handed out.

Starboard have won this title quite a few times now and this year their team riders sailed extremely well across all of the disciplines to secure themselves the prime position on the top of the podium just ahead of nearest rivals JP. It was an extremely close battle this year with Starboard clinching victory by a single point. In slalom, Bjorn Dunkerbeck (Starboard, Severne), Kevin Pritchard (Starboard, Gaastra, DaKine), and Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard, North) have all contributed towards the award. Pritchard also racked up some points for the team in Cabo Verde in the waves. And Sarah-Quita Offringa (Starboard, NeilPryde), Kiri Thode (Starboard, Gaastra), and Taty Frans (Starboard, MauiSails) have all brought home points in freestyle.

Svein Rasmussen comments:

“The PWA constructors trophy is won by our riders. Each of their great achievements totals into securing Starboard the 4th consecutive title.

All of our Race and Freestyle team only ever use production boards and even Kevin Pritchard’s 3rd place in this years Cabo Verde wave event was on a stock Starboard Kode wave board. No other board brand has yet had the ability to get their team onto production boards and then see them winning year after year after year. I would like to congratulate our brand manager Tiesda You and our design team Remi Vila, Jim Drake, Scott Mc Kercher and Sven Akerboom for their outstanding efforts.

Next year we will again need to step it all up to ensure that we can still keep ahead of our very good competitors. It’s all good fun.”

NeilPryde had an awesome year, annihilating the competition. In slalom their top rider, Antoine Albeau (JP, NeilPryde) dominated the discipline and therefore banked well deserved points for the brand towards the title. In the waves, they had Kauli Seadi (JP, NeilPryde, Mormaii, MFC), Philip Koster (Starboard, NeilPryde, DaKine), and Klaas Voget (Fanatic, NeilPryde, MFC) all making the podium at various events gaining them extra points. And in the discipline of freestyle, Sarah-Quita Offringa (Starboard, NeilPryde) won both events to help the team out even more.

Pieter Bijl commented on the brands success:

“I'm very pleased to see NeilPryde on top of the constructors ranking, especially with all the time, effort and resources we put into designing our products, it’s nice to get a clear reward for all involved.

Of course a large thank you goes out to our team who give feedback, come and assist with the development and of course who travel all over for training, preparation and especially for competition. They are a large part of the success. On top of that it is nice to see that it pays off to have a good structure within NeilPryde that allows us to bring the idea's that we have at the design center to life in our products from the beginning "prototyping" stage to a final product that our team and all consumers seeking for the best can benefit from. Competition is a great way to prove that our rigs work, especially winning the constructors title. Winning in racing and constantly doing well in Freestyle and Wave really shows our products are designed well, to withstand and perform great in all the different conditions that PWA competitions take place in. The most spectacular is the performance of our Racing program where the results were really extraordinary. We won 6 out of 7 events thanks to Antoine, and our team holds the 1st, 2nd, and 4th place in the year end ranking for racing. Just to top it all off, in Wave it is great to see 3 of our NeilPryde riders in the top 5 in the overall ranking. I'm super pleased myself as well as for everyone else involved.”